I would say that you can expected PX-W4812A around end of August. As when it will be officially announced,...wait for the final press release. It would be interesting to see if the drive will continue to support Z-CLV or pass to CAV

quote: We will have to wait and see..For sure a 48x Zone-CLV would be slower than 48x CAV or P-CAV drives.

It's all good and well to say CAV is faster than Z-CLV, but at what price? ...Quality!??

Plextor says: "...CAV recording can never be better than CLV recording. The drive sets a certain write strategy depending on the disc type and the speed. For CLV, these are kept the same throughout the disc. For Z-CLV, they stay the same within a certain zone. But for CAV, the speed constantly changes. So in theory you need millions of write strategies. It's as if you have thousands tiny Z-CLV zones. So you have to compromise, probably on quality and accuracy..."

Hi Clint When you think about it Plextor would say that as they use the Sanyo and they do not support CAV yet but I would like to bet that Plextor will eventualy use CAV. But we will have to wait and see ! Why do you think Lite-on have now moving to p-cav.

Plextor will move to CAV, maybe later than sooner. they are right if you think very well about it. i agree with CLINT, at least for now Z-CLV is slower but gets better results in the recording quality. CAV will be the future of CD recording but it still has a long way to go before it can compete with Z-CLV with the recording quality. also for recording with CAV technology you will need to use better media, better lasers and maybe more processing power inside the burner, because it is needed to calculate accurately when it should turn ON/Off the laser. but for some people speed is all that matters, but in my opinion i think it's better to wait a few more seconds and have better quality

quote: It wouldn't surprise me if they (Plextor) go over to Lite -on and away from Sanyo as everybody else is jumping the Ship

Laffin Assassin

It would *VERY* much supprise me! Why would they join the very same company they compete against

Sanyo only provide the chipset for Plextor's, probably everything else in the drive would be Plextor's own parts. (e.g. Laser, tray, gears etc would be Plextor...)

Lite-On don't make thier own chipsets, they use MediaTeK's chipsets as do ASUS and many others. I don't see any companies using Lite-On parts inside thier drives, just a full rebadge - changing nothing except the front bezel, and maybe (but not usually) the ID string and firmware. An example of the later would be the newest Sony IDE recorders. They are pure Lite-On drives, with a differant face plate and Sony ID sting with a Sony programmed firmware. Their are others that don't change anything at all except *VERY SLIGHT* modifications to the front bezel. An example of these would be Buslink, Pacific Digital. They even still have the Lite-On ID string...

And then theres your TDK, Laffin. It's a LTR-40125 inside that (cool) TDK case. Only thing differant is the ID string and firmware revision. If I were you I'd change the ID string back to "LITE-ON LTR-40125S" with MTKFlash to recieve all the firmware upgrades as oppose to TDK's virtully nill firmware releases. That way you get all the new media compatibility added and probably more programs to support it. Also the bugs in the firmware can be fixed with new revisions and maybe newer features added .

One thing I wouldn't do is flash the TDK into Lite-on. When I get the CDR-F1 how the hell will I sell it if they know it is a Lite-on I will probably have to pay someone to take it. But all joking apart ok it cannot compete with my Yamaha 3200e but I have yet to meet anything I can't backup with it and it looks cool !